Alfred Gough

Gough, Alfred

On 20th August, a group of young children were picking blackberries in a field at Brimington, near Chesterfield. At around 9.30am Gough, a hawker, passed by the group with his barrow, and soon after one of the children, six year old Eleanor Wendle, told her friends that she was going to follow him and ask for a toy from his barrow. Gough was later seen with the young girl in Johnsons Lane, and soon after she was found dead. She had been raped and strangled. He was arrested on suspicion after he told a friend that he knew something about the crime, and later witnesses testified that they had seen a bundle on his barrow around the time the girl vanished. He was convicted at Leicester Assizes on 2nd November and confessed in the condemned cell. He was hanged in Derby by William Marwood on the 24th November 1881 at the age of thirty four.